Page:The king's English (IA kingsenglish00fowlrich).pdf/18
(a phrase no worse than what any one can pick for himself out of his paper's leading article for the day) is at once the far-fetched, the abstract, the periphrastic, the long, and the Romance, for if so. It does not very greatly matter by which of the five roads the natural is reached instead of the monstrosity, so long as it is reached. The five are indicated because (1) they differ in directness, and (2) in any given case only one of them may be possible.
We will now proceed to a few examples of how not to write, roughly classified under the five headings, though, after what has been said, it will cause no surprise that most of them might be placed differently. Some sort of correction is suggested for each, but the reader will indulgently remember that to correct a bad sentence satisfactorily is not always possible; it should never have existed, that is all that can be said. In particular, sentences overloaded with abstract words are, in the nature of things, not curable simply by substituting equivalent concrete words; there can be no such equivalents; the structure has to be more or less changed.
1. Prefer the familiar word to the far-fetched.
The old Imperial naval policy, which has failed conspicuously because it antagonized the unalterable supremacy of Colonial nationalism.—Times. (stood in the way of that national ambition which must always be uppermost in the Colonial mind)
Buttercups made a sunlight of their own, and in the shelter of scattered coppices the pale wind-flowers still dreamed in whiteness.—E. F. Benson.
We all know what an anemone is: whether we know what a wind-flower is, unless we happen to be Greek scholars, is quite doubtful.
The state of Poland, and the excesses committed by mobilized troops, have been of a far more serious nature than has been allowed to transpire.—Times. (come out)
Reform converses with possibilities, perchance with impossibilities; but here is sacred fact.—Emerson. (perhaps)
Tanners and users are strongly of opinion that there is no room for